


Faster Than A Telephone Booth

by kineticallyanywhere



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, Magical Girls, Pocket Dimensions - Freeform, casual use of superpowers, lets be real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:09:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9012250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kineticallyanywhere/pseuds/kineticallyanywhere
Summary: Cisco’s been worrying about his suit, but he thinks he has a solution. Work with it - pocket dimensions.





	

**Author's Note:**

> We needed some not-angst from the S.T.A.R. Squad also I'm ready for Vibe. And I've thought about this problem a lot and came to the conclusion that this is the best option that makes the most sense.

When Barry had left the cortex the previous night, he’d left Cisco to puzzle away at his problem by himself. Barry had tried to help and throw out ideas, but eventually Cisco told him that Barry’s efforts were just encouraging HR to try and do the same and frankly if HR didn’t shut up about spandex Cisco was going to “blow a gasket so high the roof would finally break off the godforsaken building”. Cisco agreed after HR went to bed that calling the building “godforsaken” might have been after bit harsh, but at least he wasn’t throwing anything at HR. _Yet_.  
  
If someone asked Barry a year ago which member of the team would miss Harry the most after he finally shooed off back to his own universe, the last person he would have said was Cisco. Life was funny that way.  
  
Life also felt a bit funny when Barry left only to come back twelve hours and a good night’s rest and a new cup of coffee to-go later to something similar to what he had left but also _completely different_. Cisco was standing in the cortex, wearing the same pants he’d been wearing the day before. The t-shirt was different, but Cisco kept a rotating stash of t-shirts at just about every one of his major locations. This meant that if you really wanted to judge if Cisco had gone home, you checked his pants, his shoes, and/or his over-shirt. Cisco’s over-shirt was missing (in the middle of winter???) but he had DEFINITELY been wearing the same pants the day before. The purple ones were a little hard to miss.  
  
He was also standing in his socks.

The biggest difference between the cortex of the last night and the cortex of the current morning was the mood. Instead of leaning over the Vibe suit on the counter and glaring at the Flash suit mannequin from under his eyebrows, Cisco was excitedly digging around a drawer in one of the rolling tool carts he’d brought upstairs for the project he was working on. Cisco didn’t even notice when Barry first walked in.  
  
The next difference was that some things were missing. Most notably were a chair, the Flash suit, and half of the computers that Barry wasn’t sure he’d ever seen leave the main control desk. Barry also noticed the Vibe suit was gone.  
  
Barry stood at the entrance to the cortex for a moment, bewildered. While he was hesitating, Caitlin approached from the hallway. As she approached she swung off her coat and folded it over her arm.  
  
“Morning, Barry,” she greeted.  
  
“Hey,” he responded distractedly. As Caitlin came to stand at his shoulder, he pointed into the room, unsure what to say. “Uhm…?”  
  
Caitlin looked about as baffled as he felt. She mouthed “What…?” silently before taking a step ahead of Barry and properly into the room. “Cisco,” she said.  
  
Cisco didn’t seem to notice. Whatever he was looking for in the drawer he must not have found, because he slapped it shut and moved on to the next one.  
  
“Cisco!” Caitlin demanded.  
  
Cisco whirled around and stood up straight. “Oh, hey guys!”  
  
Barry moved forward to join Caitlin. “Cisco what the heck is going on? Have you been here all night?”  
  
Cisco tucked his hair back behind his ear. “Yeah,” he admitted with a guilty look at Caitlin, who’s chest expanded as she got ready to lay it to him. She’d gotten onto him a lot lately about breaking his all-nighter habits in the interest of keeping maximum control of his powers. Before she could start, Cisco held out his hands and pleaded, “Wait! Wait, I was productive, though, I figured it out!”  
  
“Figured what out?” Caitlin asked tightly  
  
“Is this about your suit still?” Barry asked.  
  
Caitlin turned to Barry. “What’s wrong with his suit?”  
  
“Nothing’s wrong with his suit,” Cisco said. “Other than the fact that it can’t magically appear over my clothes whenever I need it _except_ –” he held out both first fingers in a wide gesture. “–that it can _scientifically_ appear over my clothes.”  
  
Caitlin crossed her arms and squinted at him like he had lost it. Maybe he had. Barry set his coffee down on the table behind him and leaned backwards on the rail, ready to watch.  
  
“Cisco, are you feeling alright?” Caitlin asked. “No headaches, or…?”  
  
“No, I’m fine,” he said quickly. “I am _awesome_ –well, maybe a bit of a headache, but I have an explanation for that! See - work with me - _pocket dimensions_.”  
  
He said it and looked at them like he’d just dropped the newest version of sliced bread. Barry thought with the bags under his eyes he looked a little unhinged. He smiled and nodded when Cisco looked at him expectantly, but when Caitlin looked he shook his head and shrugged.  
  
Cisco’s smile dropped to a wattage that was less comparable to the sun but he powered through. “Look, okay, see pocket dimensions are kind of like like alternate dimensions, but they don’t vibrate at a stable enough frequency to really expand or sustain the creation of anything like our own universe, or Earth-2’s universe, or Earth-38’s, et cetera. Instead they’re like… leaves on the branches of the multiverse, where the trunk is the multiverse itself and the branches are the different worlds. Do I need a white board?”  
  
Barry waved a hand. “No, keep going,” he encouraged.  
  
“Right, okay, so pocket dimensions aren’t exactly their own universes, but they are still /dimensions/. They’re still /pockets/ of space that exist overlapping our own layer of space which we know and love.”  
  
“But that’s all just theoretical,” Caitlin said.  
  
Cisco’s grin got wider again. “Except that I found one.”  
  
Caitlin’s eyebrows shot up. Barry’s own jaw dropped. “You what?” He managed.  
  
“I found one! Or, I managed to hit the frequency of one. I got the idea when I inevitably used the lab computers to watch Netflix - sorry not sorry, Caitlin - and I was flipping through sci-fi shows and - man, what show was it again?”  
  
Barry shook his head. “Cisco, what does this have to do with…” Before he said it, a though occurred to him. He looked around the room one more time. “Cisco, where is your suit?”  
  
Cisco smiled so wide his eyes about disappeared and he bounced on his toes. He said, “A pocket dimension!”  
  
Barry floundered. “Wha- you can get it back, right?” Cisco loved that thing, if he couldn’t get it back he’d be devastated. Had he even tried yet?  
  
Caitlin took a hard look around the room again. “Cisco, where are the computers?”  
  
Cisco saw their reactions and calmed himself down a bit. “Woah, okay, I see your faces, and I can tell you wanna go ballistic but don’t freak out! Look!” Cisco reached into the tool drawer he’d left open and pulled out a screw driver. He held it in both hands, looked up at them to silently say “watch”, and he took a deep breath. On the exhale, his hands lit up with blue energy which engulfed the screw driver. Then Cisco’s hands let go, the light vanished, and the screw driver was gone.  
  
Before Barry or Caitlin could say anything, he held up a finger. “Wait,” he said. “Part two.”  
  
He held his left fist a few inches away from his right palm. He took another breath. When energy shrouded his fist, he grabbed at nothing in front if his knuckles with his other fingers and then pulled away. Except he didn’t grab nothing. The screw driver he’d just vanished appeared to pull out of the blue energy until it was whole again. Cisco let the energy dissipate and held the screw driver out for them to see. His megawatt grin was back.  
  
“ _Duuuude_!” Was all Barry could saw as he stepped forward and took the screwdriver. He inspected it himself and it looked totally fine.  
  
“Right?” Cisco said excitedly. “It’s like my own bag of holding! Except I’m not limited by the size of a bag opening; Hermione got nothin’ on this. I could fit just about anything in there! Except people,” he said suddenly more serious. “No oxygen in there.”

Barry was afraid to ask him how he knew that last part.  
  
“Like the computers?” Caitlin asked.  
  
“I can get those back,” Cisco insisted quickly. “Seriously, though. _Anything._ Imagine all the stuff we could always have ready? Boots, handcuffs, extra pens, medical equipment, emergency popcorn. I could fit a truck in there!”  
  
He said it with such excited certainty that Barry had to ask. “…did you?”  
  
Cisco smiled. “Yeah.” Very quickly he said, “Passedoutthough– _Guys_ ,” he insisted, ignoring Caitlin’s appalled look, “I need a Vibe-cycle.”  
  
“You _need_ a CAT scan,” Caitlin told him. She grabbed him by the wrist with one hand and the other grabbed him by the chin while she looked at his pupils. “ _Passed out_? Cisco you should have called one of us, immediately. How long ago was this? Was your nose bleeding? You said you have a headache still?”  
  
Cisco let Caitlin shine the pen light she pulled out of her pocket into his eyeballs with little more than a wince. “Yeah, that’s actually when that started. No bloody nose or anything, I think it had more to with with not sleeping for a few…” He trailed off with a cowed look under Caitlin’s stern expression. “Hours,” he tried.  
  
Caitlin didn’t budge.  
  
Cisco bit his lips but didn’t cave.  
  
Caitlin raised her eyebrows.  
  
He caved. “Days.”  
  
“Cisco!”  
  
“We’ve had a lot going on, okay! And I was trying to figure out this suit issue–”  
  
“What suit issue?”  
  
“He’s worried about not being able to keep up with me and Wally whenever there’s an emergency,” Barry said.  
  
“Exactly!” Cisco said, throwing a hand in his direction. “On Team Arrow they’ve all gotta put their suits on one leg at a time. Well. Except Rory. I’m not sure how that works. Anyway, you guys can get the suits from the steel butts-” he pointed to the mannequin “-to the real butts faster than I can sneeze. And I can’t just walk around with my Vibe jacket under my t-shirts! I’m not gonna do any good for anybody if I can’t even get out there before the fight’s over.”  
  
“So what does this have to do with pocket dimensions?” Caitlin asked.  
  
Cisco smirked. “I’m so glad you asked.” He took a couple steps back. “Check it.”  
  
Then he held up one fist. Blue energy collected on it again but this time he took his pointer finger and tapped himself on the bridge of his nose. The energy spread from there to cover his eyes and when it faded it left behind his goggles.  
  
“ _Whaaaat_ ,” Barry managed to say.  
  
Cisco’s smile grew, but then he held out both fists. This time the light climbed up his arms. It left his gauntlets behind and kept going. It didn’t stop until the full vibe suit had appeared over Cisco’s clothes. He lifted his feet one at a time as boots covered his socks. Suddenly the lack of shoes made sense.  
  
When it was over Barry and Caitlin stood speechless for a moment. Then Barry said, “ _Dude_!”  
  
“Right?!” Cisco said, bouncing on his toes. “You know what this means?”  
  
“You’re Danny Phantom,” Barry said.  
  
Cisco snapped his fingers and pointed at him. “I was gonna say a magical girl, but that’s even better.”  
  
“What’s the difference?” Caitlin asked.  
  
Cisco looked at her and nodded. “I like the way you think.”  
  
“You know what else I think?”  
  
“Hm?”  
  
“I think we’re gonna make sure you haven’t had an aneurysm before you try and get the truck back.”  
  
“That’s fair.” 


End file.
